In flavoring agent pastes, the flavors are bound to flavor carriers, which in general are natural or synthetic polysaccharides such as native starches, dextrins or vegetable fibers. The paste is dried and the final dry cake is ground to form a flavoring powder. U.S. Pat. No. 4,466,986 describes a process for the preparation of a flavoring agent from a flavor carrier of a maltodextrin. Maltodextrin is added at a cold temperature after reaction of the paste with the entire drying operation carried out under reduced pressure.
During drying, some flavoring agent pastes can behave in a disadvantageous manner. For example, flavoring agent pastes, when placed under vacuum, have in particular a tendency to squirt and/or to swell, thus detrimentally affecting the drying process. Such expansion can occur due to the effect of gases which cannot escape from the paste when it becomes highly viscous under the drying conditions. Such an expansion highly limits the drying capacity of the oven since it is necessary to spread the paste on to plates which takes into account the final volume of the cake. For some pastes, the spreading is only 5 kg of paste per square meter of plate.
Thus, there is a need for improved drying processes for these pastes, and the present invention proposes to overcome these disadvantages.